This is the sort of product that -- like Android, Google's mobile phone operating system -- will likely take several years to succeed or get its plug pulled.

The digital living room is far from figured out -- even Apple failed on its first attempt -- and Google has a big incentive to try and make something work.

The good news for Google is that the exact technique that Google used to make Android a big hit is the same way Google TV could eventually become popular: As the default operating system for zillions of digital TV devices.

In fact, that's the ONLY way that Google TV could succeed.

The bottom line is that TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, movie streaming boxes, game systems, and Internet routers all need an operating system of some sort, whether it's Linux, something from Microsoft, or Google TV. You can't have a computer without an operating system.

So if Google can get a bunch of consumer electronics companies -- Sony and Logitech so far, but someday Toshiba, Samsung, LG, Vizio, etc. -- to make most or all of their TVs using the free Google TV operating system, then Google TV has a chance.

One of the big challenges for now is that Google TV requires more expensive hardware to power it than what goes into many TVs. For consumer electronics companies, that means either even-lower margins than they get now, or higher-priced gadgets than what people probably want to pay for.

For instance, there's no doubt that the $250 Logitech Revue set-top box, powered by Google TV, would be a better seller if it cost the same $99 that Apple's new Apple TV costs. But instead, it costs more than twice as much. So not many people are buying them.

Another challenge is that most consumers probably don't even want Google TV, or any "smart TV" service. (Or at least, they don't know that they want it.) Consumers have certainly never bought these gadgets so far, when they were called WebTV, or any other Internet-on-your-TV system. More recently, Netflix has had some success with its movie streaming service, but it still only reaches a small minority of Americans -- 11 million subscribers in Q3.

So perhaps Google TV is just too far ahead of itself for now.

But there is time, and it makes sense that the Internet will eventually play more of a role in the living room. And so far, Google TV doesn't have much competition as the "Android of set-top boxes." It's not like Apple is going to license the Apple TV software to Toshiba, and it's not like Microsoft is going to share the Xbox 360 software with Sony.

And perhaps the TV divisions of LG and Samsung have learned from their colleagues in the mobile phone divisions that there's no need to rely on their crappy, proprietary software platforms, when good, open-source alternatives like Android are available.

Then it's just a question of Google TV being good and cheap enough to justify using.

So that's the opportunity for Google TV: It could either become the de facto operating system for consumer electronics and succeed as the Android for TVs and set-top boxes, or it could crash and burn.

But either way, given how slow the TV business moves, we won't know for a year or two.